The problem with Ron Paul is not the fact that he's the Houston area's
most assiduous pork-barreler in the US House of Representatives. It's
not his longstanding associations with racists, of both subtle and
not-so-subtle varieties. It's not even his anti-libertarian positions
on issues like immigration and same-sex marriage.

Those things are problems, of course, but they're not the problem.

The problem with Ron Paul is the uncritical cultism which so quickly
took root in the rich soil of a maverick campaign and has since
overgrown that campaign like a cross between kudzu and poison ivy.

I'm saddened to see this same cult mentality taking root The
Libertarian Enterprise.

L. Neil Smith's
recommendation that partisan Libertarians consider
nominating "None of the Above" and cross-endorsing (hopeful) GOP
nominee Ron Paul at their upcoming national convention is an
interesting proposal, and not entirely without merit. As a matter of
fact, the Libertarian candidate
whom I support has made the same recommendation. He's stated that
if Paul is the presumptive GOP nominee as of the LP's national
convention, he'll withdraw from the race and urge the LP to either
nominate NOTA and support Paul, or just plain nominate Paul.

However, last
week's missive from Alan Weiss, declaring the national LP
"bankrupt" for its failure to endorse Paul NOW NOW NOW, bears the
hallmarks of the very mentality I'm addressing.

Weiss complains that "No where on the national Libertarian Party's
website is there any endorsement of Dr. Ron Paul." Well, imagine that!
Nowhere on the St. Louis Rams' web site do I find a "Go Patriots"
button, either. That's because the Rams and the Patriots are football
teams in competition with each otherjust as the Libertarian Party
and the Republican Party are political parties in competition with
each other.

I suspect that if the Libertarian Party's bylaws, and the plain
ethical standards germane to any competitive organization, allowed for
it we would see an endorsement of Paul on the LP's web site.

According to one poll, 70% of LP members are Paul supporters. At least
three members of the Libertarian National Committee are direct or
indirect financial supporters of Paul's campaign, perfectly legitimate
conflict of interest concerns be damned. Several state LP chairs are
Paul supporters, and from what I hear some of them have effectively
turned their state organizations into Paul campaign clubs in plain
violation of the LP's bylaws relating to affiliate parties. There's no
dearth of support for Paul either in the ranks of the LP or in its
leadership echelons.

If anything, the LP has gone way too far, way too fast, in supporting
Paulif, indeed, it should do so at all. I'm not saying it's
impossible for it to happen, but if it does happen it has to
happen in a certain way:

The Libertarian National Committee has no legitimate authority to
endorse Paul at this time. That committee's members have an obligation
of trust and a fiduciary duty to the LP itself. They're no more
ethically free to endorse Paul than Coca-Cola board members are to
issue a joint declaration that they prefer Pepsi. Ditto for state and
local officials, and even more so: The national bylaws explicitly
prohibit state affiliates from endorsing candidates of other parties.
Period.

The national LP's staff, likewise, is not legitimately empowered to
use party resources to promote a candidate seeking the nomination of
an opposing party. Their job is to promote the LP, not the GOP.

LP members, of course, are free to support whomever they want. The LP
is not entitled to their support. It has to earn
that support. And maybe it hasn't. But LP officials have voluntarily
undertaken obligations, and they need to either act in accord with
those obligations or divest themselves of those obligations.

The earliest time at which the LP could legitimately endorse Paul
would be at its national convention next May, exactly as Smith
recommends. If they so choose, the convention delegates can amend the
party's bylaws to allow the nomination or endorsement of "the
candidate of another party," suspend the rules to make the effect of
that amendment immediately, and apply the change to Paul. That's not
the course I personally supportand I'll explain why in a momentbut
that course would have legitimacy. Any endorsement prior
to the convention by party leaders or staff would be, quite simply,
acoup d'etat, a completely illegitimate use of party
resources for illicit purposes.

What we're seeing in this supercharged cult atmosphere is otherwise
sensible libertarians insisting that the rules no longer apply because
they want what they want, and they want it NOW NOW NOW. But there's
more to this thing than NOW NOW NOW. . . and that happens to be the
reason I do not support Ron Paul for the GOP, or the LP, presidential
nomination.

When Paul's supporters claim that he's achieving more publicity for
libertarian ideas than anyone in a long, long time, they're right
(some say "ever," but that's just the fan fever talkingever heard
of Barry Goldwater?).

Paul is achieving more publicity for libertarian ideas than
anyone in a long, long timeand he's yoking those very good ideas
to some very bad ideas, and to a very bad institution. To the extent
that Paul succeeds, he identifies libertarianism with xenophobia, with
homophobia, with the racist agendas of some of his less savory
supporters whom he declines to disavaow, and with the Republican
Party. Those associations will linger in the public mind long after
America has elected its next president.

Am I a Libertarian partisan? You're damn right I am, especially after
my own personal experiences with trying to "go back" to one of the
major parties. I am convinced that even if the road to liberty leads
through the minefield of electoral politics, neither the Republican
Party nor the Democratic Party is a vehicle which can be driven across
that minefield. To the extent that Ron Paul's campaign identifies
libertarianism with the Republican Party, it serves to misdirect
libertarian energy.

I'm not going to try to sell you on the Libertarian PartyI'm the
first one to admit that it has problems. BIG problems. It may not be
the vehicle that can make it across the minefield either, but at least
it's the TYPE of vehicle which MIGHT. Maybe something better can be
built, but if the choice is between trying to get the LP into shape to
cross the minefield, or to futz around with a party that will never
start its engine for the attempt, I've already made my decision.

But let's assume that, in the wake of the Paul campaign, it is the LP
rather than the GOP which putatively benefits: Paul supporters flock
from the GOP to the LP. That's a good thing.

Or is it?

How many of those Paul supporters will have learned, at Paul's feet,
that "libertarianism" is really just "Taft Republicanism" and that
libertarians are "true conservatives?" How many of them will bring
their anti-libertarian ideasthe ones they share with Paul, and the
ones they hold themselves even though Paul doesn'twith them?

There's a very good chance that the LP will be swamped with
non-libertarian members. Yes, we have ourselves partially to blame due
to our own failures. If the LP was already a million members strong,
it might be big enough to absorb the conservative tide and remain
libertarian. But the LP is not a million members strong. More like 15
THOUSAND, if memory serves. Even a relatively small influx of, say,
10,000 "conservatarians" would radically change the party's character. . .
for the worse. We've been stuck in the whole "Libertarians are
just a bunch of disgruntled Republicans" rut for decades already. This
would not make for a deeper rut, it would make for a chasm into which
the LP would likely effectively disappear entirely, leaving America
with no uniquely libertarian political party.

Now, I'll ask you to note something:

At no time have I said that it's impossible for a libertarian to
support Ron Paul. I acknowledge that many libertarians can, and do,
support Paul. I think they're making a mistake in doing so, but hey,
we all make mistakes. Time will tell who's right and who's wrong, and
I'm familiar enough with my own record to understand that I may be the
one who's wrong. What I'm not going to doand what I'm going to ask
my fellow libertarians to eschew as wellis make the issue of
support or non-support for Ron Paul a litmus test for whether or not
one is a libertarian. The cult mentality harms everyone involved in it
and on all sides of it. It's not good for the Libertarian Party, it's
not good for the Ron Paul campaign, and it's not good for liberty.
It's not good, period.